one of those nights

It started off well – I got an early start for the 90-minute commute and arrived early. The teacher came a few minutes later – and sat down in the lobby of the 6th floor of the building we use for practice.

The room had been reserved well in advance but the paperwork had not arrived with the teacher. And without the paper forms in hand, they won’t let people use the room. There is absolutely no flexibility on this issue.

So we set up shop in the lobby and got to work. No uniforms – if we wore them, they would tell us to stop. But without a uniform – then it is OK to flail about with all manner of weapons, and flail we did.

No time to waste. Heavy nunchaku review, then bo, then something new: the sai vs. bo exercises. All of them. Nice partner drills, good contact, and the sai always “win” the encounter, always started by the bad guy with the bo. We had a nice sai vs. sai set in Nebraska, but I have never seen that over here, and this was my first chance to work sai vs. bo intensively.

So the frustration of not being able to get into the workout room – after a 90-minute trip – melted almost immediately. I had been given a chance, one chance only, to nail this set. Once it is ingrained, I can practice and review on my own, and with partners before/after the usual practice time, but getting it into the body is the hard part.

Rather than going through each of them once, one through ten, then repeating the whole cycle, and so on (the inefficient method so common in Japan), we did it like this: 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, repeat 1-2-3, then add one in, and so on.

In short, we spent over an hour doing the right kind of repetitions and I have a decent feeling for the set – and can now really begin to practice it. We probably wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time or done as many reps if we hadn’t been locked out, so all worked out quite well. The rest of practice went well and was disturbed only by the sudden mid-kata appearance of a rather noisy and confused stag beetle in the room. We maintained focus, he was caught and released, and all was well.

It was raining heavily after practice and I had left some notes behind in the lobby and both my trains were late and I just missed the bus for home and had to wait another 20 minutes in the rain and that bus shortens its route since it is late at night…..and none of it mattered. All because of forgotten paperwork and inflexible policy and an hour’s spontaneous drilling in the lobby. Who needs a special room for training?

unlearning

My first kendo teacher in Japan didn't immediately teach students who came to him with prior experience. He said he would wait 3 years, to watch them, judge their character, see if they were teachable.

By this I think he meant that he was waiting to see whether or not they could unlearn what they had previously "learned". He had to work with a blank slate, to write his own kendo upon each person from scratch. At the time, I had a hard time understanding his approach. Looking back, I don't think I unlearned enough kendo to learn what I could from him, and it is to my ongoing detriment.

I have a hard time letting go of things, especially when it comes to martial arts. That is part of what has gotten me into my current mess, trying to work on too many things at once.

Starting something completely new, unrelated to any prior martial arts activity, is relatively easy. But starting something that is related to things you have studied before...there are endless problems of cross-over, of old habits that interfere with new ways.

I have felt this most keenly in kobudo. As part of my karate training, we learned several weapons forms or kata. I burned some of those into my body pretty deeply, and the habits and motions of a decade and more are not easily erased.

I have had no karate action for a few years now. But I have recently made a big shift in kobudo, shifting from a couple-years' half-assed commitment to kobudo to a much more serious approach lately. It has not been easy, and there has been much unlearning.

The forms I learned many years back were right, true and correct for me at that time. More recently I have come to see them as having been "Shotokan-ized", adapted and changed from the original to fit into the overall rubric of Shotokan karate. Some of the forms I am working on now are exactly the same ones I started over fifteen years ago - and yet they are completely different.

The best example is Shuushi no kon sho, one of the basic bo / staff kata. It is the same and yet different. On the surface, you could see two people doing roughly the same kata, but once going in deeply, they become worlds apart.

For some years, my ideal was to preserve the old forms I had learned in my formative years while getting to know the "new" (original) ones. And, predictably, I made progress in neither. I have finally tried to let the old forms I grew up on go completely, and am focused solely on the "new" (for me) forms - and am, also predictably, also finally making progress.

Another example is the sai - a weapon made of metal, slightly longer than one's arm (see photo elsewhere on the blog), a rod with two tines protruding. One of the basic kata is tsukinshitahaku no sai (or, in the Okinawan dialect, chikinshita haku no sai). I have had to unlearn and re-learn completely opposite motions and principles. Only recently, after completely setting aside the "old" form which I originally learned, have the "new" motions sunk into my body.

"new": stack up at 45 degrees, block fully facing or torso square into the opponent. Stack up with the handle near my shoulder or armpit, not up by the ear. the arm is flat to block down, with the sai outside on the edge - not with the arm rotated or turned out. Narrower front stance. And on and on.

When I think about it, it has taken me just about three years to let go of my old habits, fully open myself and embrace the "new" habits. Maybe now the real learning can begin.